INGENIOUS FILM PARTNERS FILM4 AND CELLULOID DREAMS PRESENT A PRODUCTION FROM THE BUREAU IN CO PRODUCTION WITH LE BUREAU AND PJB PICTURE COMPANY AND FILM CAMP AND NATIXIS COFICINE IN ASSOCIATION WITH SOFICINEMA AND COFINOVA AN ASIF KAPADIA FILM FAR NORTH MICHELLE YEOH SEAN BEAN MICHELLE KRUSIEC France/UK – 2007 - 89 min – Colour - Dolby SRD – Scope WORLD SALES INTERNATIONAL PRESS CELLULOID DREAMS PREMIER PR PARIS IN VENICE 2 rue Turgot Liz Miller: 75009 Paris, France +39 335 671 3185 T : + 33 (0) 1 4970 0370 [email protected] F : + 33 (0) 1 4970 0371 [email protected] Ginger Corbett: +39 334 632 4806 www.celluloid-dreams.com [email protected] SYNOPSIS FAR NORTH is a dark and tragic epic thriller about the battle for survival. Revenge, jealousy and courage are played out against the harsh beauty of the desolate Arctic tundra. SAIVA, a woman living under a curse, and ANJA, her adopted daughter, live in a remote land far from civilization where she believes they will be safe. Saiva is the sole survivor of an indigenous tribe of reindeer herders slaughtered by a troop of marau- ding soldiers. After the massacre, Saiva leads the men to their death on a glacier avenging Ivar, the only man she ever loved. They struggle to survive, living off the scarce prey they can kill. One day a figure appears on the horizon and collapses. Despite her fears and doubts Saiva takes him in and nurses him back from the brink of death. Loki the fugitive, recovers and settles in with the two women as the snow arrives and the long winter nights close in. Saiva and Anja compete for his attention. As the passion between Loki and Anja deepens, they tell Saiva the heartbreaking news that they intend to leave her to start a new life together. She is devastated. As the sea begins to freeze over, Loki and Anja prepare for the long journey South to Loki’s village. Saiva retreats into a tense silence. At the moment the lovers are about to leave, she acts with terrifying and horrific consequences. SHORT SYNOPSIS A dark epic tale set in the harsh beauty of the Arctic where SAIVA and ANJA struggle to survive on the frozen wastes. They are forced further North to escape Soldiers taking over their homeland and settle on a desolate island. One day a figure, LOKI, appears on the ice and collapses, close to death. Despite her fears Saiva saves him. When Loki recovers, Saiva and Anja compete for his attention. A passionate relationship forms between Anja and Loki which leaves Saiva isolated. When the lovers plan to leave for a new life together, a desperate Saiva acts with terrifying and tragic consequences. DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT - ASIF KAPADIA My co writer Tim and I had discussed many projects to follow up THE WARRIOR, it took us a long time to find the right idea, but once I read the short story ‘True North’ by Sara Maitland, I felt a tingle of excitement I had not felt since Tim first mentioned the tale of the Samurai Boy being shown a severed head which eventually developed into THE WARRIOR. There was something exciting in the idea of filming this timeless tale in the Arctic in direct contrast to the hot Indian desert. Tim and I love folk tales and classic fairy stories and this one had the same special feeling, although here the lead character’s journey was complex and dark. Saiva’s story did not end in redemption but in her carrying out a horrific deed fulfilling the curse the shaman pronounced when she was born. I was interested in the ambiguity of the relationship in the short story between the two women, I was never sure if the older woman and younger woman were mother and child, sisters, cousins or even lovers. It was not clear. They survived together, they needed one another to stay alive, if one left the other would probably die. In the short story they didn’t even have names, there was no need, they hardly spoke to one another. Suddenly everything changed when the man came into their lives. The women began to compete for his attention and grew apart. It was important to me to work once again with the crew of THE WARRIOR, key members of the team that I have collaborated with since making my short films at film school. So once again Bertrand Faivre was Producing, Tim Miller and I co-wrote, Roman Osin was the DOP, Andy Shelley was the Sound Recordist and Sound designer, Ewa J. Lind edited and Dario Marianelli was the composer. I was working with my friends, my ‘film family’. I went into the project thinking this would be a simple, low budget film. We had the essential story, the beginning, middle and an amazing end. It featured only three people and one key location, the set consisted of a lone tent in the middle of nowhere. It could be shot anywhere. The story took place mainly within interiors. There was little dialogue. After spending so much time looking for projects, we had our story, it was all there, our first ‘adaptation’, I honestly thought it would be simple. What could go wrong? I believed we could write it swiftly, cast it, finance it and shoot it without too much talking or ‘development’. Tim and I could then get on with thinking about the next one, maybe something bigger and more complex ... Little did I know the film would take us more than four years to make. We would be shooting out of one of the northernmost settlements in the world. We needed armed protection everywhere we went in case we came across a hungry polar bear, the unit lived on a Russian Ice Breaker, which travelled over night to each new location as we slept. At times the temperature dropped to Minus 40 degrees... This film would prove harder and more logistically complex than anything I have previously done. Now the film is complete, I’m back in London day dreaming about the awe inspiring Arctic, though the feeling is only just coming back to my frostbitten fingertips! PRODUCTION DIARY DEVELOPMENT Finding the story - by Tim Miller - Co Writer After working together on THE WARRIOR, Asif and I searched for another tale for a second collaboration. We both are drawn to far away, timeless landscapes. I shut myself up in the Ethnographical Library of the British Museum to read folk tales from all over the world. But it came in a very different way. One evening I was waiting for Asif at the National Film Theatre to see Mizoguchi’s UGETSU. I arrived early and went outside to look at the stall of second hand books on the embankment. Running my finger along the line of old paperbacks, I saw the name of someone I knew and bought a tattered copy of short stories by Sara Maitland. By chance I opened it at the shortest one in the book, only six pages long and read the opening sentence. ‘‘Far north, inside the ice circle, in the land of the long night, lived two women.’’ I was hooked and with in minutes had read to the end and hurried back to meet Asif. We had found our story. The Original Idea - Far North short story – Asif Kapadia Winter 2002 I read it, my jaw dropped, I loved the set up, the landscape, the dynamic simplicity and purity of the situation, I found each of the characters interesting, and I was totally shocked by the brutal ending. I knew we had something. We rushed out and picked up the rights, working on the story alone, until we had enough to show to Bertrand Faivre the Producer. Meeting Sara Maitland – Asif Kapadia A few months later I met Sara Maitland for the first time in the Whitechapel Art Gallery. We had an interesting chat and she asked how I heard about the short story, she wondered if I had read about it and her on the internet. I didn’t know what she meant. She then told me that another director had previously contacted her about this short story, Stanley Kubrick had read it and loved its simplicity of it, he had got in touch and had asked Sara to write ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: A.I. for him. Well I already loved the short story, I knew it was a brilliant idea with amazing potential for a film, but learning that Kubrick had liked it... maybe we had something special... Writing the screenplay - Tim Miller The pile of drafts go back a long way and writing the screenplay was a slow process in sharp contrast to The Warrior, where an outline was hammered out in weeks and the first draft followed at once. There were many open questions. What was the relationship between the women? How did they come to be there? Who was the man? What world were they living in, modern or timeless, mythic or factual? And above all what motivated the older woman to commit the terrible act at the end of the story? She was the principal character, the film had to be her story and how could an audience have any understanding or sympathy for someone who acts as she does? Asif was attracted to the desolate beauty of the Arctic and from the start the landscape became a major character in its own right. We decided that the action was set in modern times but not necessarily contemporary, rifles and a wind up radio but not snow cats or modern communications.